26: Feasting in Late Uruk Mesopotamia, 3400-3100 BCE (Lugalbanda, part 1)

Guest: Kelten, Bella

First, the fragile peace has collapsed, and the virtuous king Enmerkar leads the army of fair Unug in an invasion of the faraway mountain kingdom of Aratta. However, en route to otherwise certain victory, the king's mightiest warrior, Lugalbanda, falls sick! His fellow soldiers, unable to help him and fearing the worst, lay him in a cave in the mountain wilderness as if it were his tomb.

Then: feasting during the Late Uruk period (3400-3100 BCE), starting with a look at livestock as movable property of these nascent states: history's first farm subsidy (on wool, paid in dairy fat), the particular position of pigs in both the real economy and the iconographic landscape of Uruk cylinder seals, and the long-term effects of large-scale cattle herding on the environment as a whole.

Then, a look at domestic commensality (that is, eating food together at home). What kinds of ingredients did people have access to? How did they prepare their meals? 

Then, a look at the massive temple institutions that found themselves at the center of these sprawling new city-states. How did they organize feasts, and who was invited? What did their official propaganda have to say about them? Who prepared them? Most importantly, how did they parlay their massive grain stores into a permanent class hierarchy undergirded by grinding exploitation at the bottom? Let's find out!

Then, instrumental music: how much of the modern guitar can we credit Uruk society with inventing? The day after recording this, I learned that the European lute isn't just incidentally related to the Arab oud— the word "lute" is literally derived from Arabic "al-'ud"!

Then, Lugalbanda prays to a series of gods, to forestall the funeral feast his friends have already arranged for him. Will he ever leave the mountain cave?

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Works cited